a new and songful time, and are not these souls ready, joyously ready for any good work?

Think of the woman of Samaria, glad to meet and greet her neighbors, who believed on the Messiah for her testimony, and for his own gracious testimony; can she not now unite with these, in labors of saving love with untold eagerness, heralding every whither the invitation, "Come, see a man that hath told me all;" "Say not four months and then cometh harvest," Harvest time is now all the time. Sowing and reaping clasp hands.

The ear was made on purpose that it might hear, and especially that it might hear the counsel on which hinges the highest welfare. But nonsense and slander, folly and falsehood, received audience when the weightier matters could not get a hearing. "He that hath

an ear,

let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." Rev. ii: 7, 11, 17, 28; iii: 5, 12, 21.

"To him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God;" "He shall not be hurt of the second death;" "To him will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it;" "And I will give him the morning star;""the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father and before His angels; "Him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name;" "To him will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne."

Jesus, the forerunner, entered into the holiest of all, was the believers' Hope; and what an anchor for the soul, and how does it contrast with the false hopes of the unbeliever, that glimmer and lure only to break like a bubble and fall like a scalding tear.

Before the Savior's ascension He said, "Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” Luke xxiv: 49.

The personal welcome of the Holy Spirit insured the possession of power. Pentecost provided this equipment for the church. Accord ing to the entireness of her reliance upon the gift was her measure of might and the creditable record of her victories. The reserve power of the church was never fully tested. When, now and then, some individual disciple, or some consecrated few, betook themselves to God for help, and ceased from man, the relief supplied was as heavenly as it was unusual.

The power, as close to the discipleship as the exercise of faith, was sadly wasted; and while Satan swarmed, the people, who should have been "a peculiar people" in their ability to pull down the enemy's stronghold, presented too frequently a spectacle enfeebled and sickly. "Twas the saw mill put in place and provided with machinery, the yard filled with logs, and the water which was to turn the great wheel stored in a pond, fathoms deep and spread over an ample area of square acres, but when the headgates of the flume were lifted, 'twas found that the wheel had been placed so far away from the force that only the merest fraction reached its lazy motion; and, waiting for adequate results, the machinery rusted and the logs rotted where they lay. "Januar winds blaw cauld," and the sexton stuffs the stove till it is red hot, but the people shiver in their seats, for broken window panes are on the right and left.

He who multiplied the loaves and fishes added to His bounty the lesson of economy. "Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost." John vi: 12. The gathered fragments filled more baskets than were needed to bear the original supply. When we are unwilling to allow the loss of the least gift bestowed by Jesus, we are already in the presence of miracle working. The Holy Spirit welcomed by any believer, up to the full measure of possibilities it can confer, bestows beauty as well as utility. The Holy Spirit chartered by the church to do for it what the Great Head of the church has proffered and urged, becomes a garment of luster and a crown of light. The Holy Spirit creates an impregnable bulwark and frescoes the interior.

In God's economy attractiveness is inseparable from genuine serviceableness. The Holy Spirit both clothes with power and imparts a beauty.

"Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary." Ps. xcvi: 6.

God's people are His temple; He inhabits their praises. The pillars unite solidity with grace. The gateways into nearer access are new experiences of trust and obedience; and the incense altar, that breathes its sweet odors, is the worshiping heart thrilling with a love that fain would be fuller and finer. Saintliness is a force whose momentum is marvelous, and whose fiber has a quality of tenderness inexpressible.

Erie's waters, that rush the rapids, and leap to Ontario, kept up a thunder that shook the earth, and for ages. Niagara was the synonym of might; but the power had not been converted into utility; yet folded in its arms all the while lay a form of loveliness that even in its sleep, wove in the mist its iridescent dream, and so over the place of its prison hung out the bow of promise, waiting the electric touch that"in due time" made the sleeper open her eyes and flood the heights with a glory supernal.

CHAPTER X.

THE JEWS REINSTATED.

HE history of the Jews reads like romance.

The pages

of fiction never possessed such fascination as does the strange, weird reality of Jewish story. Their annals, told with unreserve, and set in the stony accuracy of fact, startle and astonish more than any creations of fable. The millennial unfoldings and culmination outstrip all preceding chapters of interest. For grandeur of conception, intricacy of plot, impingement of restrained, unmeasured energy, variety of episode and fitness of denouement, the story of the chosen people is unsurpassed.

Paul said, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." Rom. i: 16.

Why did he say "to the Jew first?" Because, undeniably, there was some sense in which salvation was to be understood as first to him. Skeptics have claimed that the priority of this nation, in any sense, in a matter so vital must have been inseparable from open and flagrant injustice visited by Jehovah upon the rest of the race. Let the facts in the case, and the known character of the Just One, supply their own vindication.

When the first pair sinned, a promise was made that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. In each generation a few were to be found who cherished the hope of the Coming One, and kept alive a regard for God, sufficient to serve as the pledge and continuity of the promise. To such an extent, however, had evil encompassed and overtopped the good, that the servants of the Most High became in time narrowed to one family.

After Noah came forth from the ark, the same evil that had invited the flood called for another swift and sweeping destruction. The race, speaking one language and wedded to similar customs, bolstered

each other in a common opposition to the Righteous Ruler of heaven and earth, and sought to outwit Him by building a tower high enough to defy the results of a second deluge. The confusion of tongues signalized their defeat and the migration of nations, estranged each from the other and fiercely warring across their boundaries, is the commentary of providence on the suicidal selfishness of sin, as well as a proof of the accuracy of sacred history; for the testimony of eminent authorities in comparative philogy, and oriental research is that, the intersection of all linguistic paths is on the plains of Shinar.

This separation into manifold nations was not that Jehovah might select one of the many and treat it better than the rest, but it was in kindness granting the recoil from one another their covetous rivalry had sought; and this permitted isolation was also a merciful provision by Infinite Wisdom and Love to delay the work of self ruin, which the headlong sinning of multitudes massed together had occasioned by their mutual incitements and compacted momentum. And, besides, it was manifest, if good acquired a rooting, it would have to be in "a garden fenced," and could only take on growth and fruitage where summer should succeed to summer, and where nature would be seconded by the best of husbandry. The Most High had to begin somewhere. The gift of life offered to the race was offered under conditions. What was offered to all the families of man was accepted by Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees.

In order that the proffer might be impartial, it was made not to rank, nor riches, nor scholarship, but to what brought it within the possible reach of the very humblest. It was offered to faith. Genuine faith found her proper place in the dust-was practical and sincere in her outcry for help, and sought relief beyond self in the help of another Mighty to save and equally willing. The Gospel of Christ was the power of God to help the helpless. Paul urges its claims on this ground, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith." Rom. i: 17. Later, in the same letter, he expands his argument on this wise, "What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not